I wish someone had told me I didn’t need to fix everything.

I came to Massage because of my mom. I didn’t know it at the time, and for years I would have said it was because I hated retail, or because I loved helping people. The anatomy is fascinating, and being able to help people feel less pain in their bodies is a kind of drug.

But if I go deeper, it’s because of my mom.

My mom was the youngest of four, the child of abusive alcoholics. She was sexually assaulted early in life. She had surgery for scoliosis in high school and didn’t let a Harrington rod in her spine or a full torso cast stop her from being on the dance squad. That’s a perfect snapshot of my mother: in unspeakable pain, but living in her joy.

She was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder, medicated and institutionalized on and off throughout my childhood. Mostly, I remember her in bed scrapbooking, reading, or singing at full volume to Amy Grant. Or in the kitchen, cooking meals from scratch every single night.

She had disc ruptures and spinal fusions over the years, until by the end of her life her entire spine was fused from tailbone to neck. She also had a drug addiction in her early twenties, which raised her pain tolerance and, over time, increased her need for opioids and the side effects that came with them. And still, she was my mom. A source of understanding, emotional comfort, and heart in our home.

Her journey with chronic pain, pain management, and pharmaceuticals lived in my subconscious long before I ever touched a client. Every client became a snapshot of my mother. I wanted to care for them. Fix their pain. Give them back a quality of life.

That desire isn’t inherently bad. But that subconscious association made my work emotionally complicated. People-pleasing showed up in the massage room. If I couldn’t fix their issue, it felt like my fault: my lack of knowledge, my lack of technique, my lack of experience. My lack.

Somewhere along the line, I realized massage is not magical.

I mean—it is. But it’s not magic. It’s not a cure-all, and it barely cures anything. I don’t think it’s meant to. I think we’ve wrapped our egos around the idea that massage can fix people.

What it really is, is a beautiful complementary treatment. It makes other therapies work better. It can substantially aid recovery and improve health markers like blood pressure, stress levels, hormone regulation, and respiratory function. It supports the body’s own innate healing.

Maybe we’ve overblown what massage can do and missed the point.

Touch matters. Social grooming matters. Relaxation matters. We need to shift the value of our work back to the client and put down the responsibility of being their cure.

If my mom had received regular massage, I’m confident she still would have lived with horrible chronic pain. But I also know she would have slept better, been more regulated, and been able to handle her pain more easily.

And that’s what I want for my clients now.